The Circle

by Dave Eggers

Mae knew that she never wanted to work—never wanted to be—anywhere else. Her hometown, and the rest of California, the rest of America, seemed like some chaotic mess in the developing world. Outside the walls of the Circle, all was noise and struggle, failure and filth. But here, all had been perfected.

wow…. What a way to be

“I do. I’m new. In CE.” “CE?” “Customer Experience.” “Oh right. We used to just call it Customer Service.”

Lol

because total non-communication in a place like the Circle was so difficult, it felt like violence.

***

“Well, I can’t say that, Mae. I don’t want to promise that. It’s actually very stressful. And we’ve already had many people get angry when they don’t hear back from us in a given amount of time. They send one message, then they send ten more in the same day. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ ‘Sorry.’ ‘I was only trying to help.’ ‘Up yours.’ They have these neurotic conversations with themselves. So I don’t want to imply the kind of immediate message turnaround that most of your friends seem to require.”

“Mae, your dad’s just trying to say that our lives are already pretty fraught, and we have our hands full just working, paying bills and taking care of the health stuff. If we have sixteen hours more work to do, then that puts us in an untenable position.